Maintenance of commercial aircraft fleets requires the coordination of multiple service and information providers, as well as part suppliers. Line and base maintenance operations required to support aircraft flight readiness require up-to-date service manuals, maintenance repair records, engineering drawings, trained personnel, specialized tools, facilities, parts and an array of other resources. The logistics required for deploying, warehousing and maintaining inventories of repair parts at multiple service locations is also complicated, since parts must be procured from multiple suppliers as well the OEM aircraft manufacturers. Supply chain management and coordination of service providers is made more challenging where fleet aircraft serve wide geographic areas, making centralized service and inventory control by the airline operators impractical.
An integrated materials management system (“IMMS”) serving multiple fleets of aircraft, has been proposed, as described in the U.S. patent Applications cross referenced hereinabove. Under the IMMS, the supply of materials for multiple fleets of aircraft is aggregated under the management of single supply chain integrator or manager, thus reducing or eliminating the need for each airline operator to maintain the personnel and infrastructure normally required to manage material suppliers, parts inventories and related logistics. Maintenance providers, including maintenance, repair and overhaul organizations, (“MRO's) are able to draw from a single large pool of parts to support aircraft maintenance requirements. The task of managing a pooled inventory of parts is complicated by the fact that multiple suppliers must be integrated into the supply chain to support maintenance requirements for multiple fleets of geographically separated aircraft.
Accordingly, there is a need for a materials management system that efficiently processes and fulfills requests for maintenance parts. The disclosed embodiments are intended to satisfy this need.